The short and long run impact of the “great lockdown”: lessons from Italy

This project aims to assess the impact of school and economic lockdowns on short-run outcomes (the spread of the Covid-19 pandemics) and on medium and long-run ones (effect on economic outcomes and school performance) by exploiting heterogeneity in the lockdown measures at the geographical and temporal level in Italy. As for school lockdown, the analysis will use a geographical RDD by comparing outcomes in neighboring municipalities across regions that implemented earlier/later school lockdown measures. As for the economic lockdown, the analysis will exploit geographical heterogeneity in the share of inactive workers due to the selective restriction of sectors subject to the lockdown. Furthermore, the analysis will also exploit microdata on the demographic characteristics of the infected, the incremental (time) variation in the sectors subject to the lockdown and the subsequent time variation in the ones “unlocked”. The analysis will be complemented by data on mobility patterns.